ABSTRACT
It is commonly stated that Emmeline Goulden was born on 14 July 1858,1 but her birth certificate records the following day as the date of birth, at Sloan Street, Moss Side, Manchester. Perhaps she was born around midnight and her parents, Robert Goulden, a cashier, and his Manx-born wife, Sophie Jane (née Craine), decided after the birth was registered some four months later, that the 14th was the appropriate date. Perhaps Emmeline herself created the myth many years later; as a young woman she developed a passion for all things French and 14 July was the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille in Paris in 1789, an event that marked the beginning of the French Revolution. Perhaps Emmeline’s birth certificate became lost and she had not seen the recorded date; after all, during the years when she was the leader of the WSPU, she lived like a nomad, without a permanent home, and it would have been difficult to keep family papers under such circumstances. But one thing is certain: Emmeline believed she was born on the auspicious 14th and it is highly likely that her parents told her so. As she said in 1908, ‘I have always thought that the fact that I was born on that day had some kind of influence over my life … it was women who gave the signal to spur on the crowd, and led to the final taking of that monument of tyranny, the Bastille, in Paris.’2
